George Zimmerman Asks Florida To Cover Legal Bills
George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin, plans to ask the state of Florida to cover $200,000 to $300,000 of his legal expenses.
Via Orlando Sentinel reports:
Because Zimmerman was acquitted, state law requires Florida to pay all his legal costs, minus the biggest one: the fee that goes to his lawyers.
That includes the cost of expert witnesses, travel, depositions, photocopies, even that animated 3-D video that defense attorneys showed jurors during closing argument that depicts Trayvon punching Zimmerman.
Defense attorney Mark O’Mara said Monday that he would soon prepare a motion, asking Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson to authorize the payments.
That motion, he said, “is in the works.”
His office is still collecting numbers, he said, but he estimated the request would total $200,000 to $300,000.
That would be on top of the estimated $902,000 that public agencies already have spent on Zimmerman’s five-week second-degree murder trial that ended July 13.
The 29-year-old Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter by a six-member Seminole County jury for shooting Trayvon, an unarmed black high-school junior from Miami Gardens, in Sanford Feb. 26, 2012. Moments before the fight and shooting, Zimmerman had called police, describing the teenager as suspicious.
O’Mara gave a ballpark estimate of the number of hours he had worked on the case: 40 hours a week for 16 months.
At $400-an-hour, he would be owed slightly more than $1 million.
That does not include any of the work done by co-counsel Don West, who bills at $350 an hour, or O’Mara’s partner, Lorna Truett.
Zimmerman is REALLY going to need those new guns he’s been shopping for if he’s trying to pull this stunt…
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